The federal government, reported from its own record.

Daily Federal covers what the United States federal government actually did - the rules agencies published, the votes Congress took, the opinions the courts issued, and the decisions the Federal Reserve made. Every article is anchored to the document that proves it happened, and the vocabulary those documents use is explained as we go.

Congress
Bills, votes, and the calendar
The agencies
Rules, dockets, and guidance
The courts
Opinions and challenges
The Fed
Rates, minutes, and projections

A federal beat, read from the documents.

Daily Federal covers what the United States federal government actually did: the rules agencies published, the votes Congress took, the opinions the courts issued, and the decisions the Federal Reserve made. The unit of coverage is the event, not the press release about it, and every article is anchored to the document that proves it happened.

That anchoring is possible because of an unusual property of this beat. Works of the United States Government are not under copyright, so a rule in the Federal Register, a filing, a court opinion, or a Fed statement can be read, quoted at length, and restructured into something a non-specialist can follow. Most of what governs daily life is published in a form almost nobody reads, and the gap between published and legible is the whole job.

We also watch what other outlets are covering, and that material is used the way a newsroom uses a wire scan: to tell an important document apart from a routine one, and to corroborate a fact before it is stated. It is input. It is never reproduced here, and we do not link readers to it.

The vocabulary this beat uses

What we will and will not do.

We do not claim reporting we did not do. There are no anonymous sources here, no correspondents, and no datelines implying anyone was in the room. What this publication offers is careful reading of the public record, and saying so plainly is more useful to a professional reader than borrowed authority.

We publish on a quality bar, not a schedule. An event earns an article when a primary document exists or when independent sources corroborate it, and an empty day is a real possibility rather than a problem to be filled. A daily quota is exactly the pressure that produces thin pages, and a thin page costs more credibility than a missed day.

We do not take a position on the politics. An article says what an institution did, the reason it gave, and what changes as a result. The audience spans the entire political spectrum and much of it will act on this professionally, which makes neutrality a practical requirement rather than a pose.

When we get something wrong, the correction is the article. The contact page puts corrections at the top of the list on purpose, and the fastest way to reach us about one is a link to the document we misread.

Four rules that decide what gets published.

These are working rules rather than sentiments: each one settles a concrete question about whether a story runs, and each is the reason some stories do not. How they are applied to an individual article is set out on the sourcing and verification page.

01

The document, not the description

A story starts from the record itself - the rule, the docket, the opinion, the release - rather than from an account of it. If no primary document exists and nothing independent corroborates the claim, there is no article.

02

The event, not the article

Five outlets covering one rulemaking is one story here. Collapsing them is also where contradictions surface, because when two accounts of a rule disagree, the document settles it.

03

A quality bar, not a schedule

Nothing is published to fill a slot. A quiet day stays quiet, because a daily quota is exactly the pressure that manufactures thin pages, and a thin page costs more credibility than a missed one.

04

Corrections in public

An error is fixed on the article rather than quietly removed. The record of what we got wrong is part of what makes everything else checkable.

What the federal government did, once a day.

One email each weekday: the rules, filings, votes and Fed decisions that actually changed something, each one linked to the document it came from.

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